I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“But it failed to ease your pain as you expected it would. ” She was silent a moment. “When the walls came down, Rowena didn’t tell us about eating Unseelie. I lost both my brothers to Shades. I’ve killed dozens of them since. It never makes me feel better. If only revenge would bring them back, but it doesn’t. It adds to the body count. ”
“Wise as ever, Kat. ” I smiled. But inwardly I seethed.
I didn’t want wise. I wanted blood. Crushed bones. Destruction. My dark lake had rippled into crashing waves last night, with a dark wind blowing hard across it.
I am here, it was saying. Use me. What are you waiting for?
I had no answer for it.
I continued to march toward O’Connell and Beacon, checking my watch. It was ten to nine. Kat had fallen into step with me a few blocks back.
“Where’s Jo?”
“Food poisoning. Bad can of beans. Thought about bringing Dani but couldn’t find her. Brought Sophie instead. ”
Hearing Dani’s name impacted me hard. Kat looked at me sharply. I squared my shoulders and marched on. At the intersection, V’lane and his Seelie waited, on the opposite side of the street from Rowena and her sidhe-seers.
My dark lake boiled at the sight of her, hissed and steamed: Think she doesn’t know Dani did it? She knows everything. Did she order it? I locked my jaw down and fisted my hands.
I would take care of my personal vendettas later. First things first. If I was the Unseelie King, I needed the Book locked away, the sooner the better. If I wasn’t the Unseelie King, I still needed it locked away, because, for whatever reason, it kept coming for me and those I loved. My parents and I would never be safe, as long as it was loose.
All I had to do was play my small part. I would fly the Hunter over the city—supplied courtesy of Barrons, dampened and controlled—and help them corner it. Once it was contained, I would join them on the ground.
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Just to be on the safe side, I planned to keep my distance. I didn’t want any more surprises in my life.
My body tensed with sexual awareness.
“Mac,” Ryodan said coolly as he pushed past me.
The sexual tension heightened to a painful state, and I knew Barrons was behind me. I waited for him to pass.
Kat walked by, Lor passed, and then they were all at the intersection. Still I stood, waiting for Barrons to get out from behind me.
Then his hand was on the nape of my neck and I felt the hardness of him against my ass. I inhaled sharply and leaned back against him, pushing for him with my hips.
He was gone.
I swallowed. I hadn’t seen him all afternoon, since he’d told me I could lose him.
“Ms. Lane,” he said coolly.
“Barrons. ”
“The Hunter is landing in …” He looked up. “Three … two … now. ”
It flapped down into the center of the intersection, wings churning black ice crystals in the air. It settled with a soft whuff of breath, swung its head low, and glared at me with fiery eyes. It was subdued—and pissed as hell about it. I felt for it with my mind. It was seething, rattling the bars of whatever cage Barrons was capable of creating with his mysterious runes and spells.
“Good hunting,” he said.
“Barrons, I—”
“You’ve got rotten timing. ”
“You two gonna stand there fucking each other with your eyes all night, or can we get on with it?” Christian demanded.
The Keltar had arrived. Christopher, Drustan, Dageus, and Cian stalked from a nearby alley.
“Get on your demon horse, girl, and fly. But remember,” Rowena shook a warning finger at me, “we’re watching you. ”
And although I knew now why she was so convinced I was a threat—since Dani had told me about the real prophecy—I still consoled myself with the thought of deposing and killing her.
This Hunter was larger than the last one Barrons had “charmed. ” It took Barrons, Lor, and Ryodan to help me get up on its back. I was glad I’d remembered to bring gloves and to dress warmly. It was like sitting on an iceberg with sulfur breath.
Once I was settled between its icy wings, I looked around.
This was it.
The night we were going to take down the Sinsar Dubh.
At the meeting yesterday, no one had even raised the question: What then?
Rowena hadn’t said: The Seelie won’t be permitted anywhere near it! It will be ours to guard, and we will keep it under lock and key forever!
As if anybody’d believe that. It had gotten out once.
And V’lane hadn’t said: Then I will take my queen to Faery, with the Book, where she will recover and search it for fragments of the Song of Making, so she can reimprison the Unseelie and re-create the walls between our worlds.
I wouldn’t have believed that, either. What made them so certain fragments of the Song were in the Book? Or that the queen could even read it? The concubine might have once known the First Language, but she’d obviously drunk from the cauldron too many times to remember it now.
And Barrons hadn’t said: Then I will sit down and read it, because somehow I know the First Language, and once I get the spell I’m after, you all can do whatever the fuck you want. Fix the world or destroy it, I don’t care.
And Ryodan hadn’t said: Then we’re killing you, Mac, because we don’t trust you and you’ll no longer be necessary.
Unfortunately, I believed the last two.
The tension I felt was unbearable. I hadn’t realized how much I took Barrons for granted until he’d made it plain earlier today that his time with me had an expiration date.
I could lose him.
Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted from him, but at least I knew I wanted him around. That had always seemed to be enough for him.
Unfair as hell and you know it, a small voice inside me said.
At my hip, my radio squawked. “Check, Mac. ”
I pressed a button. “Check, Ryodan. ”
We tested the radios all around.
“What are you waiting for, girl?” Rowena barked. “Get up there and find it!”
I nudged the Hunter with muscles and mind and watched her dwindle beneath me, as great black wings powerfully churned the night air. I wanted to squash her with my thumb like the infuriating speck she was.
Then I forgot her in the pleasure of the moment.
This was a rush.
This felt … good.
Familiar.
Free.
We rose higher and higher into the sky. Rooftops receded beneath us.
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In front of me was the silvery coastline. Behind me, open country.
The air was crisp with a tang of salt. Lights beneath us were few and far between. I laughed out loud. This was amazing. I was flying.
I’d done it before, with Barrons, but this was different. It was just me and my Hunter and the night. I felt wide open with possibilities. The world was my oyster. No, the worlds were my oysters.
Damn, it was good to be me!
I suddenly knew something about Hunters—maybe it fed it to me with its mind. Not only were the massive icy dragons sifters, they made the Silvers obsolete. They weren’t Fae. They never had been. They were amused by us. Aloofly entertained. They hung out with the Unseelie because they found it … interesting to pass time in such a fashion. They’d never been imprisoned.
No one owned them.
No one ever could.
In fact, we didn’t even begin to understand what they really were. (Not alive the way we thought. Was I flying on a huge breathing meteor through the sky? Carved from that of which the universe had begun?)
I reached out for the Hunter’s mind. You can sift worlds!
It turned its head and fixe
d me with a fiery orange eye, as if to say, How stupid are you? You knew that.
No, I didn’t.
It snorted a tendril of smoky fire back at me, scorching my jeans.
“Ow!” I clapped a hand over my knee.
Don’t need blinders. Wipe off his marks. Interfere with my vision. That one should be terminated. He plays with the instruments of gods.
“Barrons? What marks?”
On my wings, the back of my head. Wipe them off.
“No. ”
It was disappointed but fell silent, accepting my decision.
I opened my sidhe-seer senses. Or was it that part of me that was the Unseelie King? I gasped.
I knew where the Sinsar Dubh was. It was outside Barrons Books and Baubles. Looking for me.
“East,” I said into my radio. “It’s at the bookstore. ”
They crept around it, draping a net of stones chiseled from the cliffs of its home, closing in slowly but surely, with my guidance.
It could sense me near. It wasn’t sure where. But it didn’t seem to be able to sense them.
I listened to chatter on my radio.
Rowena had begun with her demands that the Seelie not be allowed to see the Book once it was sealed away, although Kat tried desperately and diplomatically to curb her imperious attitude.
The Seelie were growing more incensed by the moment. And getting more imperious by the moment.
Drustan was trying to run interference, but the other Keltar began bickering among themselves about the role of the Seelie and the role of the sidhe-seers, insisting their part to play was more important.
Barrons was getting angrier with each passing minute, and Lor had just threatened to drop the stone and leave if everyone didn’t shut the fuck up.
“Two blocks west of you, V’lane,” I said. He was walking, not sifting. Said the Book would sense his presence if he did.
“It’s moving again, fast,” I cried. It had just shot three blocks in a matter of seconds. “It has to be in a car. Whoever it’s got is driving it. I’m going to try to get closer for a better look. ”
“Don’t you dare!” Rowena said. “You stay up there, far away from it, girl!”
I scowled. A Hunter-sized bowel movement on her head would go a long way toward making me feel better. For now. I was afraid killing her might be all that would satisfy me long term.
“Get off my back, old woman,” I muttered, and turned the voice function of my radio off so I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me.
I didn’t want anyone to pick up on the whoosh-whoosh of the wings that had abruptly appeared beside me—which were much too massive to belong to the Hunter I was on.
I stared down the leathery wing of my Hunter at the one that was flying tandem with us.
K’Vruck.
Nightwindflyhighfreeeeeee.
I hastily checked my internal radar. It was hardly a typical Sinsar Dubh thought, but I couldn’t be too safe. Only when I was certain the Book was still on the ground did I breathe easily again.
What was K’Vruck doing here if the Book hadn’t brought him? Its thought had been less words and more an observation of the moment.
Was K’Vruck … happy?
It turned its head sideways and gave me a toothy, leathery-lipped grin. The tips of its wings worried my Hunter’s span, making it rear in alarm.
“What are you doing?”
What are you?
“Huh?”
I fly.
I looked at it blankly. It had emphasized the word “I. ”
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Used to ride me, it chuffed with reproach. Old friend.
I stared at it, nonplussed.
My eyes narrowed. It was clearly part of some conspiracy to make me think I was the Unseelie King. That was one load of crap I wasn’t buying. “Go away. ” I swatted at it like a fly. “Shoo. Get out of here. ” I was shooing finality more final than death.
I was dimly aware of Barrons shouting on my radio.
It turned its leathery smile forward and sailed serenely along, barely moving its enormous wings, surfing a breeze. It was five times the size of my Hunter, several houses of leathery wings and hooves and enormous oven eyes and whatever held all that icy blackness together. As it passed through the dark sky, the breeze that sloughed off its titanic body steamed like dry ice.
“Go!” I snarled.
“Mac, where the hell is the Book?” Ryodan’s voice sounded tinny on the radio. We were higher than I’d meant to be. “Where are you? I can’t see you up there. I see a couple of Hunters flying together, but I don’t see you. Fuck, is that one enormous or what?”
Great, just what I needed. Somebody to look up and catch me flying side by side with the Unseelie King’s favorite Lamborghini. I thumbed my volume back on. “I’m here. In a cloud. Hang on. You’ll see me in a few minutes,” I lied.
“There aren’t any clouds up there, Mac,” Lor said.
Christian snapped, “Lie, MacKayla. Try again. Who are you flying with?”
“Where’s the Book?” V’lane demanded.
“It’s—Oh, there it is! Damn! Now it’s four blocks to the west, down by the docks. I’m going down for a closer look. ”
When I nudged my Hunter into a dive, K’Vruck dove with us.
“Ms. Lane,” Barrons demanded, “what are you doing flying with the Hunter that killed Darroc?”
39
They refused to let me land.
I couldn’t exactly blame them.
It wasn’t so much that I had my own Satanic wing man—there wasn’t anybody on the ground that night who hadn’t dipped a toe into something dark at one point or another—as that they worried the Book would grab K’Vruck somehow and then we’d all be, well … K’Vrucked.
I couldn’t shake him. The Hunter who called himself something more final than death simply would not leave my side. And a secret part of me was a little thrilled by it.
I flew over Dublin with Death.
Heady stuff for a bartender from small-town Georgia.
I had to watch from the air as the debacle unfolded. And it was a debacle.
They cornered it, hemmed it in with stones, whittled in and down until they finally had it penned on the steps of the church where I’d been raped. I had to wonder if it somehow knew that and was trying to mess with my head.
I kept waiting for it to speak in my mind, but it didn’t. Not once. Not a word. It was the first time I’d ever been in its vicinity that it hadn’t tried to mess with me somehow. I figured the stones and the Druids had a dampening effect.
As I watched, they moved the four stones—east, west, north, and south—in closer and closer until they formed the corners of a box, ten feet by ten feet around it.
A soft blue light began to emanate between the stones, as if forming a cage.
Everyone backed away.
“What now?” I whispered, circling over the steeple.
“Now it’s mine,” Drustan said calmly. The Keltar Druids begin to chant, and the silver-eyed Highlander moved forward.
I had a sudden vision of him, broken and dead on the church steps. The Book morphing into the Beast, towering over them all, laughing. Taking out one after the next.
“No,” I cried.
“No, what?” Barrons said instantly.
“Stop, Drustan!”
The Highlander looked up at me and stopped.
I studied the tableau below. Something wasn’t right. The Sinsar Dubh was lying on the steps, an innocuous hardcover. No towering Beast, no chain-saw-toothed O’Bannion, no skinned Fiona.
“When did it get out of the car?” I demanded.
Nobody answered me.
“Who was driving it? Did anyone see the Book get out of the car?”
“Ryodan, Lor, speak up!” Barrons snapped.
“Don’t know, Barr
ons. Didn’t see it. Thought you did. ”
“How did it end up on the steps?”
V’lane hissed. “It is an illusion!”
I groaned. “It’s not really there. I must have lost track of it. I wondered why it wasn’t messing with me. It was. Just not the way it usually does. I screwed up. Oh, shit—V’lane—look out!”
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40
Do you hear that?” It was driving me nuts.
“What?”
“You don’t hear someone playing a xylophone?”
Barrons gave me a look.
“I swear I hear the faint strains of ‘Qué Sera Sera. ’ ”
“Doris Day?”
“Pink Martini. ”
“Ah. No. Don’t hear it. ”
We walked in silence. Or, rather, he did. In my world, trumpets were blaring and a harpsichord was tinkling and it was all I could do not to go spinning in wide-armed circles down the street, singing: When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty, will I be rich?” Here’s what she said to me …
The night had been an abysmal failure on all fronts.
The Sinsar Dubh had tricked us, but I was the one to blame. I was the one who could track it. I’d had a tiny part to play and hadn’t been able to get it right. If I hadn’t clued in at the last minute, it would have gotten V’lane and probably killed us all—or at least everyone that could be killed. As it was, I’d given V’lane just enough warning that he’d been able to sift out before it could turn the full brunt of its evil thrall on him and get him to take it from the hand of the sidhe-seer who’d been standing there offering it to him.
It had conned Sophie into picking it up right under our noses, while we’d all been focused on where it was making me think it was.
It had been walking along with us for God only knew how long, working its illusions on me, and I had misled them. Very nearly to a mass slaughter.
We’d run like rats from a sinking ship, scrambling over one another to get away.
It had been something to see. The most powerful and dangerous people I’ve ever known—Christian, with his Unseelie tattoos; Ryodan and Barrons and Lor, who were secretly nine-foot-tall monsters that couldn’t die; V’lane and his cohorts, who were virtually unkillable and had mind-boggling powers—all running from one small sidhe-seer holding a book.
A Book. A magical tome that some idiot had made because he’d wanted to dump all his evil from himself so he could start life over again as patriarchal leader of his race. I could have told him that trying to shirk personal responsibility never works out well in the end.
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